China’s goal is ‘not to trade with US but to raid it’
Trump’s former attorney general warns Beijing on an ‘economic blitzkrieg’
Former attorney general William Barr criticises American companies for being too close to the Chinese government and argues for more regulation of US technology companies in a book about his time in president Donald Trump’s administration.
China was engaged in “an economic blitzkrieg” using all instruments of national power “to seize the commanding heights of the global economy and surpass the United States as the world’s pre-eminent technological power”, Barr wrote in his memoir, One Damn Thing After Another.
It has received media attention for passages about his contentious interactions with Trump after the 2020 election.
Barr wrote the election was not stolen – Trump was legitimately defeated by Democrat Joe Biden. Barr also said Trump “lost it” in the days after the election as he spun falsehoods that he was robbed by massive fraud.
In an interview on NBC’s Today show, Barr said he did not think Trump should be the Republican nominee for president in 2024, but he would vote for him if he was.
Barr also elaborates in his memoir on themes he pursued as the chief US law enforcement officer, including his view that the time has come for US companies and policymakers to act with unity in response to China.
On China, Barr writes that too many executives “are managing their companies to achieve a transient uptick in the stock price so that they can cash in their options and retire to a comfortable life in a gated luxury golf resort”.
“They don’t seem to realise – or don’t seem to care – that China’s goal isn’t to trade with the United States,” he writes. “It is to raid the United States.”
Barr played a leading role in the Trump administration’s “China Initiative” – an effort to counter what it called nefarious activity by Beijing, particularly within America’s college and university system.
But the initiative was ended last month after it was criticised for fanning discrimination against Asian-Americans and as several high-profile criminal cases failed in court.
Barr also says more regulation is needed to curb the power of social media giants like Google and Facebook. He accuses them of deceiving regulators, lawmakers and the public over many years in their bids to control markets and information.
Unlike Trump, however, Barr does not want to abolish a law known as Section 230 that shields internet companies from lawsuits over content published by third parties. Section 230 has become a target of conservatives who say it lets left-leaning tech firms censor right-wing voices, and Trump claims it is unconstitutional.
Barr calls for “vigorous enforcement” of US antitrust laws to help police internet companies and writes that Congress should also grant “tightly defined regulatory authority” to the Federal Trade Commission, or another existing entity, to combat monopolistic online platforms.
“I have natural reservations about imposing a regulatory framework on market activities, as most conservatives do, but the reality is that some markets, or market conditions, require a degree of regulatory intervention,” Barr writes.
“In the case of Big Tech’s major platforms, it is hard to see how the challenges they pose to competition, privacy and the free flow of information can be addressed in the absence of regulatory framework.”